SPOTLIGHTED PODCAST ALERT (YOUR ARTICLE BEGINS A FEW INCHES DOWN)...
Last night’s episode of WWE Monday Night Raw drew a 1.63 rating, a typical rating lately, slightly below the May average of 1.66 and right between the prior two weeks in June. The ten week rolling average is 1.67.
The first hour drew 2.325 million viewers, the second hour 2.303 million, and the third hour 2.078 million. The first-to-third hour drop-off was 247,000, below the 380,000 average dropoff so far this year.
One year ago, Raw drew a 1.97 rating, and two years ago it drew a 2.04 rating.
“Daniel Bryan’s visit to Raw … leads to better than average audience retention …” . That’s a way to spin it, but if you look at last year’s audience at this time, the third hour is down about 650k viewers. That is a lot, and tells me that Bryan is not really a draw at all.
At this point I don’t know who would actually be a draw. Promising and delivering on a Stone Cold match (I am talking hypothetically, I know he will never wrestle again), on Raw, might pop them a 2.0.
Sam,
They always have an excuse here for the low ratings. I guess they have to keep kissing WWE bottom and hoping we don’t figure out the truth.
More like the NBA & NHL finals are over, summer prime time TV is mostly all reruns, Worst Wrestling Ever ratings improve only slightly.
But I don’t think it’s fair to say that Daniel Bryan isn’t a draw. Raw & SmackDown both suck so much right now (thanks to the McMoron family), that only a completely unforeseen wrestler’s return or other unexpected surprise (your guess would be as good as mine) would significantly move the needle up these days for at least 1 week anyway.